So. It has been many months and much has transpired since I last wrote an entry. I have recovered from shoulder surgery in January. I ended my 29-year professional career in May...at least for a while. My step-dad died, bringing closure the horror that was my childhood (and that now I can finally write about). I have reconnected with long-lost "family," both blood and chosen. I came back to yoga. And I spent the past four months in discomfort, trying to adapt to a state of dependency that I have resisted most of my 51 years. I am slowly softening around the resistance, but it is a difficult journey to healing.
The people who are closest to me know that I have been uncharacteristically emotional. I cry now, pretty regularly. I feel now, since I am not blocking my feelings through activity. And I have slowed down to a point that I worry about my brain getting mushy. One of my best friends has told me that my inactivity is allowing me to do all of my emotional processing. My therapist reminds me that I don't need to base my self worth on what I accomplish. And I have been trying to live an observe in this place that is new. And frightening. In my mind I see my mother, sitting in a chair, all day, every day, with the TV on and the lights turned low. I am not my mother, but I have always feared becoming her. Rationally, I know that can't happen. Emotionally, I force back the urge to actively resist by zooming around and filling my days with things to do. I am hopeful to find balance at some point.
When I started this blog, I had had an epiphany and given myself a year to get out of my toxic work situation. And as of August 2012, I had done that and eased myself back into academia where I have always felt most comfortable. However, even though on the surface nothing had changed much, everything was different. And I was no longer in a position to be a change agent. I recognized that donning my professor hat again was only temporary, but I also realized that occupying a position where I could see with the perspective of an outsider brought me much frustration. I simply couldn't do anything to improve the issues I saw as problematic. And the inability to have a voice or drive change echoed the place I had just left. Another light bulb went on. Sometimes recognizing your essential life needs only happens when they are absent.
After a very interesting discussion recently with one of my best friends, an amazing astrologist, we shed some light on a part of my natal chart that had always been confusing for us. I have a planet in a certain house that indicates "a life half-lived." From the outside, this didn't make sense, because I have achieved a great deal of success, both professionally and personally. However, I have always known that something was missing. I have had an artistic hunger that surfaces regularly, and is reflected in the creative endeavors in which I have dabbled over the years. But it has always been overshadowed by my drive for external accomplishment and acknowledgement and thwarted by the Gemini energy that causes me to bounce from interest to interest without ever staying long enough with one thing to see where it might take me. Since I have freed up my time and my life from those external constraints, I have opened space to let that artist out. And, if I truly want to soften around resistance, I need to allow myself the opportunity to explore all of those different avenues of artistry in which I have taken an interest--writing, music, dance, drawing and painting, jewelry making, sewing and fiber work, and even the home arts of cooking and baking and decorating--without judgment.
I have a house full of materials I have collected over the years and a head full of ideas I want to try out. Now I just need two things, both of which I will have to give myself. The first is structure. I know I am project-oriented and work best when I have a schedule and some kind of a deadline or deliverable. So, I am scheduling classes to keep me focused and intend to add some kind of dedicated creative time into my week. The second is permission to fail. A great deal of my resistance stems from a need to be good at whatever I do, a remnant of trying to please a narcissistic mother for 44 years. I am working at being conscious of that and recognizing it for what it is...only an echo of someone else's judgment from my past. This was another lesson learned from my astrologer/artist friend. When she created an art quilt she didn't like, she cut it up and re-envisioned what it could be as part of another composition. I need to channel more Kali energy, and let old patterns die so new energy can flow.
And finally, I will need to exorcise the demons from my past. I have never publicly identified myself as a survivor of abuse, but that is exactly what I am. A flashback incident last summer in my childhood house sent me right back into therapy where I am exploring how, in spite of my childhood, I have thrived. Somehow, I had to strength and wherewithal to save myself. Which is exactly why living as someone else's dependent now is such a difficult state of being for me. I am learning to recognize that I am safe. That the person I love and upon whom I depend will indeed take care of me and loves me unconditionally. And that what he is giving me right now is one of the greatest gifts ever...the time and space to find myself.
